Why Are There Non-Negotiable Moral Standards?

Most people around the world believe that murder, rape, cruelty, child abuse are morally wrong. Why? Is it just an evolutionary coping mechanism that helps perpetuate the species? Read about the arguments that suggest that objective moral standards are evidence that God exists.

In the William Lane Craig vs. Lawrence Krauss debate, Craig points out, “Actions like rape, cruelty, and child abuse aren’t just socially unacceptable behavior—they’re moral abominations. Some things, at least, are really wrong.” ₁ Why? Is it merely an evolutionary aid to survival and reproduction? Craig observes:

[With] a naturalistic view, moral values are just the byproduct of biological evolution and social conditioning. Just as a troupe of baboons exhibit co-operative and even self-sacrificial behavior because natural selection has determined it to be advantageous in the struggle for survival, so their primate cousins homo sapiens exhibit similar behavior for the same reason. As a result of socio-biological pressures there has evolved among homo sapiens a sort of “herd morality” which functions well in the perpetuation of our species. But … there doesn’t seem to be anything about this that makes this morality objectively binding and true. ₂

If it were true, then groups like the Nazis would be justified in their mass killings to purify and perpetuate their race. Yet, how many people around the world support the Nazi atrocities? As Timothy Keller explains in his book, The Reason for God:

An individual’s self-sacrificing, altruistic behavior toward his or her blood kin might result in a greater survival rate for the individual’s family or extended clan, and therefore result in a greater number of descendants with that person’s genetic material. For evolutionary purposes, however, the opposite response-hostility to all people outside one’s group—should be just as widely considered moral and right behavior. Yet today we believe that sacrificing time, money, emotion, and even life—especially for someone “not of our kind” or tribe is right. ₃

Why? Why are there universal moral standards? Where do they come from?  Craig has an explanation: God. Craig reasons:

1. If God did not exist, objective moral values and duties would not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, if follows logically and inescapably that God exists. ₄

To Read More

William Lane Craig, Is There Evidence For God? William Lane Craig vs. Lawrence Krauss (Reasonable Faith, 2011) Available at: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-craig-krauss-debate-at-north-carolina-state-university#ixzz1uIT936fc (May 11, 2012)

Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York, Riverhead Books, 2008)

References

1. William Lane Craig, Is There Evidence For God? William Lane Craig vs. Lawrence Krauss (Reasonable Faith, 2011) Available at: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-craig-krauss-debate-at-north-carolina-state-university#ixzz1uIT936fc (May 11, 2012)
2. Ibid.
3. Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York, Riverhead Books, 2008), 133.
4. William Lane Craig, Is There Evidence For God? William Lane Craig vs. Lawrence Krauss